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Speaker 1: Quest Left Show is a production of iHeart Radio.

00:00:18
Speaker 2: Open Mic Man, Happy Thursday, Happy Thursday, and Day Absolutely. Man. You got any plans for the weekend?

00:00:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm shooting video this weekend. That's the biggest plan shoot, shooting a music video for the new project. What you Gotta Treatment? Everything laid out? You kind of it laid out. We've shot most of it already. It's the last day of shooting. It ought to be nice and easy.

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Speaker 2: Oh man, I can't wait for that one. I saw a little visual content on the Grammar online. I'm eager for this one, and I love you know. I was thinking a lot about Wild Pitch Records recently. I was in something I think it was an old episode of QLs and they were somebody was talking about Stu Fine and before they got to the punchline, I'm like the founder of Wild Pitch. And to me, even before Ruckus, that was always a label I could trust most of the time. And I feel like we've gotten away from that a little bit. There are labels that you've worked with over the years, but I do feel like Backwood Studios is a brand you can trust.

00:01:14
Speaker 1: I feel like they're like the last sons of Krypton, you know what I'm saying. Like they are like the the vestiges of the underground that I used to that I came up in and I saw so many labels. See this is and and I'm already off on a tangent what we do. It's a rabbit old platform to me, the unspoken story of the sort of deletion of the hip hop middle class. And how like you know, a lot of times now it's just like superstar rapper or struggling indie. There's there's not a lot of working rappers in the in the stratum in between. And part of the story of that is how many labels used to exist that are gone now you used to have And this this goes back I think too, when the majority of money that was coming in was based on selling CDs and physical product, that there was enough money coming in to make sure that these labels were able to stay afloat and keep putting enough money in rappers pockets every time they dropped the album, that they were able to stay afloat between that and touring. Yeah, and so many of those labels are gone, and Backwoods feels like the last sort of connection to you know, not only the aesthetics of of the older days, but a viable, well run business that's putting forward the new voices in that same family tree.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely new voices. And then you know, I mean even what I consider veterans yourself. Yeah, you know, it's just one exactly. You know, they've been very kind to some of the They put out some great product with some of the folks that have been kind to me and that I've gotten to you know, share some airwith over the years. So yeah, I'm looking forward to that. And on the subject to hip hop, you know, we're talking about the last episode we've run in June, which is part of you know q LES. I think this is year four or five of our Black Music Month initiative, where episodes to the catalog are run every day if it's not a mini episode like this or a new episode. But the final new episode of this month is none other than Chuck da Public Enemy. And I really was hoping when you and I got together in the studio with the Mirror and the rest of the team in LA I was hoping it was going to be the same day as Chuck, but it didn't work out that way. But man, it was that was something something special. Man he is.

00:03:44
Speaker 1: He's such a dope dude, and it's just like we have some real and I hesitate to use this term because it also covers a real crew with some homies in mind. But we have some real living legends in this thing. The real rap giants ha still walk the ground and can still have a conversation with you, and they're not often venerated in a way I feel like they should be. But Chuck d is just an incredible human being that was a titan in this rap thing, and it's just amazing to hear him in conversation, like that's just amazing here.

00:04:29
Speaker 2: He's one of those talking he talks, he talks, and he knows he talks. He laughed. You know, He's one of those people that could read the ingredients to a box of tricks, and I would enjoy it. Just his voice, his conviction was funny. On the way to the studio, I'm originally from Pittsburgh and I am a hapless Pittsburgh Pirates fan, and he and I and Chuck's daughter Dominique were taking the elevator up and I've said this to Chuck before on the phone, but it was our first time being in you know, a small space together. I was like, man, aside from Clemente, Roberto Clemente, you have done so much much for the pirate hat. And he looked at me, He's like, you know, I'm a Mets fan, right. And last I was like, man, all the literal elevator conversations a guy who idolized his public enemy could have with Chuck D. You know, I you know, I shot the brick. Yeah, well that's on him though, Yeah, yeah, well no, I mean, you know, but I so appreciate him. It was funny like Chuck was not a last minute booking by any extension, but kind of a last minute agreement while we were in LA and he had a very busy day and he was very generous with his time. And I think, much like Questlove and Open Mike Eagle, I think a Mer and Chuck D will be a series of conversations, right because the conversation really goes from like nineteen childhood memories up until about nineteen eighty eight eighty nine. And I'm okay with that. I'm ready for another hour. You know, great, what stood out to you with this one?

00:05:54
Speaker 1: You know what really stood out to me. First was him talking about the sample for Public Enemy number one, and Emir asked him why that song, why that James Brown song and nobody else really used And when he told that story of the roller rink and how like that was the song that was the signal for all of the real skaters to get out there and cut it up. And it's like, damn, you can hear that, and I just like, that's the sort of things that fascinate me. It's like the real life reasons that people make, the choices that you hear on records that you would never understand, you would never know, you would like it's because the song's not about roller skating. You don't talk about that in the song, but it's such a great song, and you never would have known that it was this real, visceral memory that he wanted to invoke. Yep, that is the reason this song sounds like this.

00:06:52
Speaker 2: You know, I agree with you, and I think of that in life a lot, just the butterfly effect of small decisions. But I didn't, you know, I grew up there were still roller rinks in my neighborhoo and stuff like that. I I can't skate to save my life. But the idea of the roller rink is a place to hang out and meet folks, and like that's so that that's a little antiquated to me. But to hear Chuck talk about that in here one record, then the blow your Head joint, you know changed, I will I knew I knew Public Enemy number one before I knew the Fred wes Lee James Brown joint.

00:07:26
Speaker 1: So it's same.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And I figured, like the the the founders of hip hop and how one creative records, you know, one choice from one DJ ultimately shapes livelihoods, legacies, incomes all of the things. You know, It's just crazy. So it's also interesting. He mentioned roller skating again in that conversation. I've never seen this, but correct me if you understood it differently, But he alluded to performing in roller skates, like being He.

00:07:53
Speaker 1: Did say he could do a couple of his songs on roller skates. Yeah, that was he said. There really smooth to what I'm like, Wait a minute, nothing.

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Speaker 2: About that, Like twenty twenty six sounds a special, but it sounds cool if Chucky's doing it. Have you had many Chuck or Pe show going experiences, So.

00:08:10
Speaker 1: I've never seen a Public Enemy show. But I did have quite the chuck the experience. And if I ever get a chance to talk to him, gonna ask him if he remembers this day because I went to College's Southern Illinois University and he was brought up.

00:08:27
Speaker 2: Is that an Urbana Champlain.

00:08:29
Speaker 1: No, this is a Carbondale, Illinois, so comarad south of.

00:08:32
Speaker 2: I've been there too. I always confuse my schools, but go ahead.

00:08:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're easily confusable. But he was brought in to give a speech and the large Ornate Central School auditorium where you know where if they had a ballet company come or they had a theater company come, they do it in this big Ornate must have been two thousand seat auditorium. And he's about to give his speech and the tornado sirens start going off. And this is the Midwest, this is southern Illinois. It's very flat, and you know tornado watches and tornado warnings or things that happen, but this was a serious one. And it's not the sort of thing. When you're in a tornado warning, you can't just like send people home, right, you have to go to shelter. And so I don't and So the part that I don't quite remember correctly is how this would have worked with the laws of physics. But everyone who was there was put in the basement, Chuck included. And so we go from this big ornate theater with you know, gilded ceilings and all of that. So now we're all in a basement where the ceiling is about you know, a shade over six feet high, and Chuck d is down there with all of us, in the middle of this tornado warning, and he just starts doing the rest of his speech right there in the basement and did a Q and A with us right there in the basement. Wow, And it was just it was just one of the most amazing moments I've ever had, and really watching somebody adapt deal with the situation, not sweat, not trip out, just roll with it. Now we're in the basement. So now the talk continues, and I'm just standing there, riveted the whole time. I can't remember word he said, but I do remember him giving this speech in this basement because we had a tornado warning.

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Speaker 2: Was he there to speak about hip hop? Was it about you know, other issues? Or do you remember that part or not?

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Speaker 1: I do think it was it was something to do with hip hop. I think a lot of times stuff on our campus was about, you know, how we turn things around into black community sort of sort of sort of talking points, you know, save people from falling into street violence and then those types of issues. I believe that's what it was about, but I honestly don't remember.

00:11:17
Speaker 2: He would have to remember that. I imagine that when.

00:11:20
Speaker 1: About so but I can imagine, like that's the thing. He was so cool about it. It was one of the things that made you think, like, how many wild days does this man had just wild days to where this is nothing to him? You know.

00:11:33
Speaker 2: Think he made a comment to Amir in the interview, or maybe it was the moments before we started rolling where he said, I'm so glad you're around because people don't have to come to me to be the talking head for every documentary everymore, Like you know, whether it's about hip hop or black entertainment culture or whatever. It is amazing to me that Chuck could sit for a whole hour and he's not somebody who repeats himself. He spoke about writing as he drove. I knew he was a messenger like that part always heard, but I never had clarification whether he was you know, like a bike messenger, like I never knew how to picture it, or it sounds like he delivered photographs two different you know, he was kind of a courier but by car. But the idea of him writing some of his most classic material while driving at night was dope.

00:12:21
Speaker 1: I love that psychotic. That's just pure psychosis. You were trying to tell people rappers are insane. Even even the most lucid of us, You could tell we always got a little screw loose somewhere. And I feel like that's like the way he talked about that is like a perfectly legal and safe activity.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, was amazing that. And then there's this moment too and this Amir looked at me and we just started laughing because and this is so cool to me too. Of like you hear about the cobbled together resources that you know brings hip hop. I got a turntable, you got a turntable bringing them together. They got a mixer. But Chuck was saying, you know, with the bomb Squad, and I feel like, you know, people often think of just the production. They think, oh, you know, Hank and Keith Shockley and Eric Vietnam Sadler, but like Chuck was very integral to that production, and he down like you don't hear him asserting his own credit, but he was describing how, you know, in Roosevelt, Long Island, I think it was Roosevelt, they had this like they put all their records together in one place, and they like created a dewey decimal system of where each record could be, you know, not alphabetical, not like the jazz is over here, the funk is over here, but that way you could look at a book. And Chuck was priding himself on his penmanship. I just love that, Like that is that is elder leadership right there. He was like you could look and go, okay, cool in the gang this album show five, you know, like you know, like you're in a big box store. And I just thought that is such a great image when they're making, you know, the second and third Pe album of just those layered samples and all that they did to make it sound the way it did.

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Speaker 1: You know, you remind me too, how often it is when you really go back and look, how often our rap legends were involved in the production in ways that we would never really understand as listeners because that weren't the way. That wasn't the way things were talked about. I think about Daylight Soul's involvement and a lot of their records, like the like Pass and Day of themselves bringing in samples or having the goal of Okay, I want to I want to flip this, I want us to use this, or making the beats themselves at home and bringing them into the studio, and a similar thing with like Organized Confusion. How you know, Paul C was with them early on, but through their next couple of albums, most of them were you know, it was it's Prince Paul and Farrell themselves making the beats. It's always interesting to me to sort of wrap my head around how involved a lot of these rappers were in the production in ways that you know, we didn't know.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's interesting too. Like I always look at Organized as the last disciple of Paul C. But to my knowledge, and I could be mistaken, I don't think that there's a released credit of like A Paul And I know Paul was both an engineer who doubled as a producer, but I don't know that on the first self titled album, there's a policy credit.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what, I don't actually don't remember those credits. And I feel like, if you had to ask me to place a bet, I'd say, yes, he's got a credit on there. But that's only because that's what I think.

00:15:32
Speaker 2: Like, I actually don't know one of those. You know, there was another thing and you and I talked about this before we got on. But like the reason why I still love the interview even though that, you know, I get to produce one of the best music podcast period is you'd get these accounts of things that aren't there anymore, right, And I'm always like my wife, I annoy the hell out of her because we'll walk around Philadelphia and I've only been here twenty five years, but I'll talk about what was here before this new building is here. And I really I like that, and I've always wanted hip hop to have more of that, you know, I'm always fascinated. Like just yesterday, I was in New York and I was on thirty seventh Street and I'm like, man, I remember being in D and D Studios and it's a lost now and I wish I had taken a photo. Like I know they're online, but I wish I had taken a photo.

00:16:19
Speaker 1: I feel you.

00:16:20
Speaker 2: And Chuck was speaking about old venues and he said something in passing of it's not there anymore. It's not there anymore. And I just wanted you know, in your journey and in your creative career, but also your fanhood of all of this, like, are there certain venues that you miss, you long for I wish you could have been in. I know that's probably an obvious question.

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Speaker 1: So most of my performance history has been while I've been living in LA So you know, one might think that I would miss places in Chicago. I saw shows in Chicago, but I never really performed there at the beginning of my career. So like the knit In Factory that was here in La, Like, it wasn't a great place. It wasn't like it it was in Hollywood in like a shopping center, like the same block is like the Chinese Theater, so it was hard to get to and hard to park and all of that. But I just remember seeing some amazing shows there when I first moved here, like, and I didn't have much to do, I didn't know that many people, so like that was often a place I would end up at I saw like jasone player, like slick rick player somebody, you know what I'm saying, and it'd be like, oh, this is this is so dope to be able to see this. And that's that's gone now. My favorite venue in the world, my favorite venue to perform at, was this place in Portland, Oregon called the Doug Fur Lounge. And there's a place that was like connected to a hotel, but it was like under the ground, so you wouldn't even have any idea that there was like a big venue here, but they it was under the ground, but it was huge. It was like three hundred cap room that you walked downstairs into and it was decorated like like a log cabin almost like there was like these wood logs that were on the sides of the walls. And not only did that add an aesthetic, it was really dope for making the room sound good too, the way that it's soaked up the sound. And it was just my favorite favorite venue in the world. And it's gone now. But that's that's what happens. Especially in the pandemic. We lost so many of the rooms that are the size that I like to play that you know, I like a three hundred to five hundred cap room that either shut down because they couldn't have shows anymore, or Live Nation swooped in and bought up plenty of them. So they're different now even when you do get the chance to go back and perform there.

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Speaker 2: And I only kind of put that together on the fan side recently, but I miss some of those those spaces. I miss places. I notice it because I live in a part of Philadelphia and I'm often on the street South Street that is still where there's a couple of clubs, and you know, I'm regularly walking by. I think where you perform when you're in town. Milk Boy, yep there, And I just remember all the different marquis you used to look at, just like step in and see who's coming up if you didn't have a city paper, And a lot of those are gone, and it's it's one of those things like bars open late that we just lost with the pandemic.

00:19:20
Speaker 1: Man, there was a period.

00:19:21
Speaker 2: Of time in two thousand and eight where I was brought in to possibly do a memoir with Eazymo B And they were like, yo, you know the woman who hooked it up, Nikiah Hicks, who I think is very much part of the Young Dolph pr camp and shout out to Nikia if she happens to hear this. But she was like, come up to Times Square and spend an evening with Ezimo in the studio. And I didn't think much of it. I mean, like, I respected him, I'd interviewed him, but I was like, I don't know if this book is viable because he's not He's not Chuck d he's not out there speaking all the time. He's not a front facing exact pop Yeah, you know exactly and you know heads no, but not everyone does. But I went to the studio and he had a bunch of Heinekens and I don't typically drink on the job, but that was kind of a spec job. So we had a few beers and it was the first time in my life somebody showed me not like a tutorial, but he was triggering samples off the sp twelve hundred, and it was just fun to watch his delight, Like he didn't really want to talk to me, which only spoke to my consternation about the book. But watching this man's delight, and then at the very end of the night, you know, I needed to catch my train back to Philly on my bus, he was like, do you know what this studio was? And he goes, this is Unique Studios. This is what he owned it from my understanding, and he sense it's closed down, but it's where Miles Davis recorded his last era of material. And he took me into a room because Moby produced the last the Doubop album, the Miles album with wrapping his fundamental on it. And he took me in the room. He goes, I don't use this room anymore because this is where my career kind of really took flight. And the last person to really, you know, spend a lot of time in this room was Miles and he had the to that room. And we're in the middle of Times Square, even in two thousand and eight. I mean, real estate is unfathomable. And there was dust and there were old plaques and there were things, you know, old equipment, and I think of that all the time. I'm always fascinated, not as a creator, but as you know, a writer when I'm in these studios of just like, who else recorded here? What else was done here? And what are we doing as a culture.

00:21:23
Speaker 1: To keep exactly to preserve, don't we do a I mean, you know, preservation honestly takes money. But two things. One we got to do a better job of it too. That is part of the reason why I like to interview legends is because at least getting these stories in some easily digestible digital medium that's labeled correctly and people know that they're coming to to get some history is at least one way to preserve the stories, even if we don't have the money to preserve the places.

00:22:00
Speaker 2: Such so beautifully said, and I think of your work like I think of you talking to Prince Paul and him referencing in Deaylav referencing Calliope Studios, which is long gone. And I'm the type of weirdo that at eleven thirty at night will sit at my kitchen table and try to get like a screenshot, you know, try to get like a Google image of what did it look like? Because I've heard about it. What did the doors that Daylau walked into to make me feet and hus and look like? And we need that because you absolutely get that with the Beatles, and you get that with Abbey Roads. So on that note, and I don't mean to make it all about studios, But you know, to end you as a creator, like, what is the one place, be it a venue or as a studio, what is the one landmark? And it doesn't have to be gone, but that you haven't touched or used that you would like to on your list.

00:22:46
Speaker 1: I don't see this happening, But if for some reason I was able to do something at the Apollo that to me seems like like I, I would probably freak out. I would probably freak out, yeah, like like just being able to be on that stage and see what it's like to see out into that room from that stage.

00:23:13
Speaker 2: I walk by. I spent a few nights staying on one hundred and twenty fifth Street, and every time, you know, I talked about Marquees, but every time walking by, the Apollo is still a place and I can say I've never been inside, which is pathetic because I've been invited to shows there, but it still makes, you know, still gives me goosebumps, just knowing the history and knowing the power of a building in a way that you know, I live in Philadelphia, you know, I walk by Independence Hall every single day. Frankly I don't get from other places, but knowing how much I love music. So that's a great answer. I wasn't necessarily expecting that, but I hope that manifests maybe over time.

00:23:54
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it seems like it would take some sort of serious pivot on my part to end up there. But you know that, like in a dream scenario, like wow, that would be awesome.

00:24:06
Speaker 2: You know, it would the one thing I'm trying to learn right now and being part of this organization, I really try to take key because I know Amir speaking to all of us in the podcast, you know, like every listener, every viewer, but he's like, you know, dream boldly and you know, don't make yourself you know, I'm trying to take heed to those things when he's like, don't make yourself feel small, just like vision it and so man, I like that. That's a great place to h and you know, once again, the chuck the episode, I gotta say from the inside, we've talked about it so many times, different ideas, different things. I'm happy it happened when it did. It was so right that it was in person, and what sounds like both of us look for is more in the series.

00:24:46
Speaker 1: Absolutely.

00:24:47
Speaker 2: Okay, wait, man, We'll have a great video shoot this weekend, and we'll do this again real.

00:24:52
Speaker 1: Soon, Yes we will. Couslup shows a production of iHeart Grading